Barnes Ignoble

Jonah Goldberg has a problem. Perhaps an innocent lack of foresight, or perhaps a grand evil scheme, but apparently it can be hard to find Jonah's new bestselling book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, at Barnes & Noble bookstores.



Many people have piped in to Jonah with their own example of futile searches for the title in the brick & mortar stores. The weather was crappy here today, so I figured I would see how B&N fared online.

The result...not much better....

If you go to their website and look up the book, will find that it is "Usually available in 1-2 weeks". Hey, not bad for an Amazon #1 seller, and a NYT top 10 bestseller, right??


(Click on picture...I also like the fact that you can buy the book used starting at $122.98!)

The B&N website has another option, to check availability at your local stores. So how did my area stores fare? Uh, not so good.....

When I provided my Zip Code, I got the results for 6 local stores. According to the system, only 2 had it lested as "In Stock". I wonder if the 'Audacity of Hope' had these problems?



So, while it may not be a vicious leftist bookstore worker conspiracy to keep the conservative word down, it certainly ought to be a lesson to Barnes & Noble that perhaps their business model, both storefrint and online, could use a little more flexible.